The south wall of the Citadel, which extended as far as Mincing Lane, served as the river-side wall for that distance. It was continued from that point to the present site of the Tower—a distance of 450 yards—with a new wall. No remains, I believe, have yet been found of that last piece of work. Between the old river wall and the river is now a long and narrow strip of land of varying breadths, but generally 300 feet. It contains a series of parallel streets, narrow and short, running down to the water; these streets are now lined with tall warehouses, except in one or two places, where they still contain small houses for the residence of boatmen, lightermen, porters, and servants. The history of this strip of land is very curious. Remark that when the wall was built the whole foreshore lay below it without any quays or buildings on piles—a slope of grass above a stretch of mud at low water. The first port of London was Walbrook. Within the stream ships were moored and quays were built for the reception of the cargoes. During the Roman occupation there were no water-gates, no quays, and no ports west of Walbrook.
A SHIP
From Tib. MS., B. v.
The Roman name of the second port, which was later called Billingsgate, is not known. Observe, however, that there was no necessity for a break in the wall at this place, because the port was only a few yards east of the first London Bridge with its bridge gate in the wall of the Citadel. A quay, then, was constructed on the foreshore between the port and the bridge. Everything, therefore, unloaded upon this quay was carried up to the head of the bridge, and through the bridge gate into London.
Later on, when the third port was constructed at Queenhithe, the builders must have made an opening in the wall. Now, at Walbrook, at Billingsgate, and at Queenhithe the same process went on. The people redeemed the foreshore under the wall by constructing quays and wharves; they carried this process farther out into the bed of the river, and they extended it east and west. At last, before the river wall was taken down as useless and cumbersome, the whole of this narrow strip, a mile long and 300 feet broad, had been reclaimed, and was filled with warehouses and thickly populated by the people of the port, watermen, stevedores, lightermen, boat-builders, makers of ships’ gear, sails, cordage, etc., with the eating-houses and taverns necessary for their wants.
This process, first of building upon piles, then of forming an embankment, was illustrated by the excavations conducted for the construction of London Bridge in 1825-35. There were found, one behind the other, three such lines of piles forming embankments. The earliest of these was at the south end of Crooked Lane; the second was 60 feet south of the first; the third was 200 feet farther south.
The sixteenth-century maps of London may also be consulted for the manner in which the quays were built out upon piles. It is obvious that more and more space would be required, and that it would become more and more necessary to conduct the business of loading and unloading at any time, regardless of tide.
These considerations strengthen the evidence of Sir William Tite and his opinion that the whole of the streets south of Thames Street must have been reclaimed from the foreshore of the bank by this process of building quays and creating water-gates for the convenience of trade.
The destruction of the wall, which had vanished so early as the twelfth century, is thus easily accounted for. Its purpose was gone. The long lines of quays and warehouses were themselves a sufficient protection. The people pulled down bits of it for their own convenience, and without interference; they ran passages through it and built against it.